“Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s jump up and down – Gangnam Style!” This has been the theme of many parties recently and this song & dance sequence has been replayed at so many events and so many occasions in the last few months, that its’ reached out to people in the remotest of regions who may have even had no access to the Internet! Such has been its success!

It was on the 15th of July, 2012 that the world was first witness to PSY’s Gangnam Style. From then on, the video has spread its wings far and wide to reach out to close to a billion viewers (845,851,259 as of 29 November, 2012)! The success of Gangnam Style showcases just how powerful the Internet can be in being able to “virally” spread your content across the globe.

How did it become so wildly successful? Why was it shared and liked so much? What did it do to reach out to so many people across the globe? These are questions that we want answers to so that we could also try and create our own unique Gangnam style success story in what we do. Here are 7 reasons why we feel the Gangnam Style video became such a resounding success:

1. Rocking Content – The content you have has got to be outstandingly good and stir people in some way for them to react. The Gangnam Style video had many such elements going in its favour:

a. PSY the Personality – Who’d have expected a middle-aged plump faced guy to be the lead of a music video? And who’d have expected him to carry off such moves and such expressions (in the manner he did)? The video was made keeping his personality in mind – he could carry it off and he did it with flair! People love Psy and for him being who he is has had a large part in the video’s success.

b. The Trademark Horse-Galloping Dance – The video wouldn’t be what it is today if it weren’t for the unique horse-galloping dance that PSY so perfectly rendered in this video. It was unique yet simple enough for people to catch on to and emulate on their own. It was funny given the contexts in which he presented the dance. It was what no one would expect to see in a music video. The dance gave the video its unique theme and identity and it caught the fancy of many viewers.

c. The Catchy Tune– The music had dance worthy beats and was catchy enough to warrant the attention of many viewers. It is in spite of the language barrier that the song has been so widely appreciated, and that speaks volume of how much people have liked the song for all its beats.

d. Multiple Backgrounds, Multiple Costumes & Multiple Personalities – There were as many as 19 different background settings in the 4 m 13 s video! That’s plenty of setting changes to keep the viewer hooked on to the video. Also the video was cleverly edited to ensure that there was never too much of the same setting for more than a few seconds! Then there were the costumes – bright colors, multiple costume changes by PSY, the constant eyewear which has now become his trademark, the contrasting costume colors in some settings – all of it gave the video an extended visual appeal. Then there were the multiple personalities, some of whom were noted Korean personalities – a kid from Korea’s Got Talent, a couple of really famous Korean comedians, … – of course, to the unfamiliar viewer these were just multiple different characters that lent a different dimension to the video. All in all, it was the continual element of “change” that kept the viewer engaged. It takes a lot to keep our distracting minds engaged these days and the video was smartly designed to cater to our limited attention spans.

2. The Intention was to be Outrageous & do the Unexpected – In this interview here, PSY gives a breakdown analysis of why he chose each locale and setting for his music video. The underlying reasoning was to Read more

It is quite common to read that “Social media marketing is the future” on marketing forums. However, many business owners still believe that it’s just a passing wave (a fad) or an excuse to waste even more time on social networks.

The truth is, like any other form of marketing, social media is not just something you can try “for a day or two”, and expect to see results. Real people are on the social networks, and it takes time (and some strategic planning) to make this area of marketing work for you. This purpose of this post is to give you a simple and nice layout of a few strategies that you can apply to launch a successful social campaign for your business.

4 Important Components of Social Media Marketing

1. Defining your marketing objectives

Why? Why are you marketing in the first place – what is the purpose? You want to be more specific than “to make more money”. You need to think “1 step before the money”. Is this marketing campaign’s purpose to generate more leads? Or maybe it is to bring more eyeballs to a certain offer (traffic)? It could also be to get people to spread the word about your business (offering a free gift in exchange of a “Like”, for example).

2. Integrating social media with other advertising forms

The good thing about social media is that nearly everyone has a social account. This means that if you want to maximize the reach of your social media marketing campaign, you can include your fan page or handle links in your other ads (and people will relate to them).

You can also completely replace one of your marketing outlets completely with social media. For instance if you usually spend $250 on newspaper advertising, you can invest that money in hiring experts in social media marketing – they will take care of the fan page creation, FB advertising, PPC, content creation, managing the entire social account etc.

3. Know exactly who your buyer is

Does your target market consist of 45 year-old single males who have trouble with dating? Or is it of 16 year-olds who love gaming? Is your ideal buyer someone who wouldn’t mind paying hundreds of dollars for a solution to his problem?

Age.Gender.Spending power.3 important criteria (among many others) that you can begin with. This helps in giving a direction to your social campaigns.

Once you know your target audience, you can offer them something that they really want, and communicate the benefits of your product in their jargon. This is the difference between a good enough product (and campaign), and an excellent one.

Just to illustrate this point: A 23 year-old male interested in gaining weight is more likely to respond to “Pack On Slabs Of Rock-Hard Muscles In 7 Days Or Less!” than “This product will help your body increase your muscle cells’ intracellular fluid” (which might work for a biology student, if that’s who you want to target!).